Q&A for Love in the Time of Cholera

Questions and answers from a roundtable discussion with some of the people behind the film adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s classic novel Love in the Time of Cholera, notably the director Mike Newell, along with producer Scott Steindorff and lead actress Giovanna Mezzogiorno, who plays Fermina in every phase of her life. The film also stars Javier Bardem, Benjamin Bratt, Catalina Sandino Moreno, John Leguizamo and Fernanda Montenegro.

DIRECTOR MIKE NEWELL:

Q: Why isn’t the film in Spanish?

Because I’m not fluent in Spanish. It may not be the producer’s answer, but it’s my answer. It’s, of course, a perfectly good question. There are wonderful Spanish, Mexican directors who could make it in Spanish. The money came from Hollywood. The money could have come from Outer Mongolia, in which case perhaps we would have made the film in that language. The language of Hollywood is English, and they have a right to think they may get their money back. Their calculation, right or wrong, is that the film being in English is central to that. It’s a business just as well as anything else. It’s a business.

Q: Then why not choose actors from England, America, Australia?

Because they don’t have the sensibility, I believed, that we had to have. There is very clearly a Latino sensibility. What you’ve got between the two questions is a contradiction. All I know is that when South American people, South American journalists, South American audiences, who have now seen the film four or five times, with those audiences - when they see it, they are really overjoyed that it’s in English, because they feel that they are abandoned and overlooked. You will hear Brazilians say “we’re the forgotten continent. We make as many airplanes as Boeing but nobody knows that.” What they see is that, to start with, the sensibility that they know is in the novel and in the place is on the screen. They believe in the sensibility. It is, for them, authentic. They also see that it will be exposed in the English-speaking world and the northern hemisphere in a way that a lot of their films very often aren’t. They also feel very passionate about this writer, Marquez, and about this book, because they think, quite rightly, that there is something representative of them in his writing and particularly in the world of this and, I suppose, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

You can sit with people and tell when they are being respectful, and the Latins who watch this film are not respectful. They shout, they cheer, they cry, they stamp, they run about in the aisles. They are very, very positive about it. So somewhere along the line, we’re okay. We can be justified. The end of the question is simply that we, on the one hand, are confronted by a practicality, a practicality of banking apart from anything else. It takes a lot of money to make a movie, it’s an expensive film, relatively speaking. On the other hand, what you have to do is to make sure that the language that you put on the screen is something that will represent this very great work of art, and the only way you get to know whether you made it or not is by the way that its home audience responds to it.

Q: Would it have been better in proper English, then, without the accents?

No. I thought about that very carefully, and if you say “okay, let’s play it in English,” then the language of the movie becomes not American English, because of the period, but British English, and British English will feel like a Merchant Ivory film. Very, very good films but very clearly, distinctly of a type. What Merchant Ivory does, what an English view of the 19th century does is that you have buried passion expressed in frustration. So, in other words, the Englishman wears a three-piece suit because it’s a suit of armor and you’re never going to see. That’s what he wants. That’s how a Merchant Ivory film is made, and that’s how a great deal of 19th century literature is. The language comes out of the mouths as if everybody’s talking out of a cat’s bottom. I was worried about that. Then I saw, during casting, a film that Julian Schnabel made called Before Night Falls, in which he did the same trick except that it was Cuban-accented instead of Colombian-accented, but I believed, within five minutes, that I was listening to Spanish.

Q: You feared it becoming a costume drama?

Yes, I was very afraid of that. I was really afraid of that. I used the camera in a particular kind of way, we had a whole philosophy of it. There is nobody in this film that does not have an intense and pressing, private, selfish life. Nobody sees other people’s motives, nobody understands anybody else. Everybody is going somewhere and making sure that they get there by elbowing everybody else off the pavement. The whole story has to go like that, and that’s what we tried to do. I think that’s on the screen if you look at the big scenes. There’s a little guy at the riot in the theater,,and we gave him a cushion and said “try and hit the Chinese guy.” You can see him, he’s on the screen twice. He’s entirely focused on hitting the Chinese guy with his seat cushion. We tried to do that all the way through so that, in the market scenes, everybody’s got something to do. What you have is a great mound of life, like a termite’s nest, which is what the city feels like in the novel and what the city actually is like when you go there. The city is Cartagena and we shot in Cartagena.

Q: There are more characters in the book than those you focused on.

Yes. Of course, there were some really difficult decisions to be done about that. One of the things that we did say was “should we be doing this in 12 hours of television?” But there is also something in the novel which is heroic, and it’s epic, and it’s interesting to see that it’s epic on this tiny level, very, very intimate level, but it’s epic at the same time. You know it when you see it. We felt that you had to start with a screen of a certain size, because the sentences of the phrases of the paragraphs of the chapters that Marquez uses had to have a visual equivalent, and one of them was that we would always try to tell at least two stories, if not three or four stories, in any frame. There’s always other things going on. For instance, while the girl is saying to the boy “Yes, I will marry you so long as you don’t make me eat eggplant,” the aunt, who is a kind of nun and who is clearly desperately disappointed in love, is standing just behind her saying “Just say it, say it, go on, say it!” You put those two things in the frame at the same time, and each reflects off the other which is one of the things that the writing does - everything reflects off of everything else. That’s what we tried to do.

Q: How is Javier as an actor?

He is more completely the character than any other actor I think I’ve ever worked with. Maybe Pacino. Because he simply becomes the character, and he works in such a detailed way, and so precisely. There’s a scene, right at the end of the movie, where he goes to see her and he gives her a photograph that he’s found in the market, and I didn’t tell him any of this stuff. We had a movement coach who was very useful, but Javier, who is 38, had to play a 75-year-old who’s arthritic. The way he gets that photograph out of his pocket is extraordinary, because what he plays is that the muscles don’t do what he’s asking them to do. They stop. It hurts, and at the same time, he can’t think like that, he’s got to be thinking emotionally. So you get these layers on layers on layers of observation, which then just becomes mulched together in the character. It’s extraordinary. I used to think that if I didn’t say “cut,” Javier would just kind of ramble off in character and never come back.

At exactly the moment that he’s delivering these astonishing things, he’s agonized by what he perceives as his lack of achievement. I’ve seen him when he’s been doing sound work, where you look at yourself and you have to match your lip movements again and again, and I’ve seen him run out of the theater, almost in tears, to be in private because he couldn’t bear looking at himself. I’m sorry that he has such trouble, but by giving himself trouble to that great extent, the performance is the better for it, because he’s constantly pushed beyond. There’s a scene where he discovers the grave of the girl who has her throat cut at the same time that he’s burying his mother, he has these two terrible losses at exactly the same time, which knocks all the wind out of him. The grave was a very simple cement slab, somebody had written with a stick in the wet cement. He finds it and puts a flower on it. The grave is under a tree - the first take, there’s a little branch sticking down. He bumped into the branch, it looks sort of daft. So you say “Wonderful, Javier, great, one more time, watch out for the branch.” Second take, he bumps into the branch. “Very good, Javier, just watch out for the branch.” Third take, he bumps into the branch. Fourth take, he doesn’t bump into the branch, but only very late does he realize what you’ve said, and the reason for that is because he’s so completely fixated in the emotional moment that he doesn’t actually even feel that branch. It’s not there. You take that cup, and he will simply fill it up until it’s got a meniscus of the character. Totally full of the character.

Q: Who’s more passionate, the Harry Potter fans or the Marquez fans?

The ones who most frighten me are the Love in the Time of Cholera fans, because I’ve done the Potter fans. They should think themselves very, very lucky, but I haven’t done the Cholera fans, so they’re the ones I’m frightened of.

Q: Does the mythical status of the book scare you?

Absolutely. But you got through it by this: “What do you want to do the book for? Why would you do a stupid thing like that? Why would I do it? Why wouldn’t Alfonso Cuaron do that?” Because Alfonso could make it in either English or Spanish. The answer to that is partly becuse they asked me, and partly because when I re-read the book, I found a reason for believing in something that I had always believed in, which was that - what Florentino says in the very end is, in effect, “we may be going to die tomorrow, but that leaves us 24 hours, so let us really live while we still have the chance.” Florentino has really lived, all his life, 622 times and her. She hasn’t quite. She’s timid and has held back. What the title of the book says and what the book itself says is that you must live. Don’t be frightened, you must just live, and if you haven’t, you haven’t. Not ever. You’ve missed by a thousand miles. It’s a very moving thing, that, and something that is a challenge to everybody Everybody’s involved in that. What will happen the instant of our deaths? Will we have lived?

Q: Did you have a different understanding of the book when you re-read it than when you first read it?

Oh, completely. I was 20 years older. For this novel, I think it’s good to be older. It’s good to know you’re going to die.

PRODUCER: SCOTT STEINDORFF:

Q: Why did you make this movie?

I read the book and thought it was a very unique love story in a culture we’ve never seen. The Latin version of Romeo and Juliet, and it was just so unique that I became obsessed with making it.

Q: Why did you decide to do it in English?

I knew it was going to be a really big movie - it’s a $50 million movie, and there was no way I could justify doing that in Spanish. I talked to Mr. Marquez initially about that - that I wanted to do an epic love story for the world. To hit a bigger audience, I needed to do it in English, and I’m really glad I did because it’s showing the Latin culture to a wide audience - people that wouldn’t access this material, so it’s turned out really good.

Q: How did you convince Marquez to make the movie?

Apparently, there were, over 22 years, between 40 and 60 offers. He never wanted to sell the book. He rejected me for a year and a half, and when I finally spoke to him after a year and half of rejection, my first words are “You are Fermina, you have rejected me, and I am Florentino and I’m not giving up until you give me the rights.” His response was “I need to correct you. I’m Florentino.” We both laughed, and I kept pursuing him, and a year later, I closed the deal on the rights. I asked him recently, because I get this asked a lot, why he sold me the rights. Was it money? Was it creative, that I was going to be very faithful to the book? I think it was a mixture of that and humor, because he’s a very funny person, but he won’t answer why he sold me the rights. He won’t give me the answer.

Q: Marquez told you that the initial script was “too faithful to the book.” What did he suggest you change?

He wanted me to develop the young love more, which we did do. Every time we’d get a draft of the script, I’d send it to him to make sure that he was involved and that we were remaining faithful to the book. I remember him saying that “I read the script, it’s too faithful to the book,” and I said “I know, I told the screenwriter “screw the book, just go make your movie.” He thought that was so funny. He laughed and laughed. The book has a lot of stitchwork, in his words, where the characters are interwoven, and we wanted to focus on Florentino and Fermina and their love affair. It’s a 385-page book, you can’t do everything, so I wanted to focus on the love rather than the war, because this is a big love story.

Q: How did Shakira get involved?

Marquez called Shakira and said “You must get involved with this.” Initially, I wanted her to play a small part, but she was on tour and wasn’t available. She’d given me “Pienso,” the song that she did when she was 17, and we were like “Yeah, we want to put that in the movie.” When I showed her the first cut of the movie in London, at the end, she stood up and started humming a song, and my composer Antonio Pinto had his guitar and started playing, and in two hours we were in a recording studio in London.

Q: How was shooting in Colombia?

I didn’t even want to visit Colombia, initially. I was going to film it in Brazil. There was no infrastructure for film in Colombia. Honestly, it was the perception - the drugs, the terrors, the wars, everything you hear about Colombia. Vice President Francisco Santos [Calderón] of Colombia called me up, because he had read that I was filming this in Brazil, and he said “you have to film this in Colombia. Come visit, you’ll see it’s a very safe place, I’ll give you all the security, I’ll support you.” So Mike Newell, the production designer and I went to Cartagena on our way to Brazil, and we instantly fell in love and I said “Mike, we have to film it here.” I can tell you that Colombia is one of the most beautiful places in the world. The people were wonderful. It’s a very unique culture and I love it. I would definitely film there again. I fell in love with the place. It’s very safe. I can take you places 20 minutes from here that aren’t safe. All places have that element, but I didn’t see it in Cartagena. I had security and I didn’t need it.

What was interesting about filming in Cartagena is that Gabo is Bono. I always tell him that, because I see him in Mexico City and he goes out, and people just flock to him. He’s a rock star. I tease him about it. In Colombia, there isn’t any school kid or anyone who doesn’t know who Garcia Marquez is. So all the locals that we hired, the extras, were so passionate and proud of their country, to be part of it. I’ve never seen such passion in people in my life. We closed the streets at a great inconvenience to the locals, and I thought “oh my god, we’re going to get so muck flak,” but they all came to watch, and they cheered when they saw Javier. They were so proud. That’s what’s nice about it being in English, because I was just in Minneapolis, and it was probably my biggest reaction to the movie. People were like “oh my god, that country is so beautiful, and it’s amazing, this story, and I never knew!” Here in California and New Mexico and Miami, we know about Latin culture. They don’t know about it in the northern states. This project for me has taken on a new meaning, that I feel proud that I’m showing a culture that is so unique and different, and it’s opening the eyes. Americans know Europe, but they don’t know the culture and history of Latin America. There’s a huge source of material there.

Q: How was working with Javier?

He’s one of the greatest actors in the world, bar none. I said it day one. He’s so committed. He really embodies the character. He’s so focused.

Q: What about bringing magic realism to the big screen?

You can’t really visually show magic realism. It would’ve been a special effects movie and taken you out of the characters. I wanted to tell a story about people, not images.

Q: What’s your next project?

The one I’m most passionate about is Tortilla Curtain, a T.C. Boyle book, which is about a Mexican couple that intertwines with a couple in Malibu. Also Latin themed. Nobody understands Latin culture. Look at the immigration problem, the fences going up, “let’s not let those people in.” I’m German, they let my grandfather in. We understand the German culture, but they don’t let people come from the south? That’s not fair. They don’t know anything about the people, the culture, but we’re judging and we’re being racist. It really is racist, so I think it’s unjust. So I’d love to tell stories that show that the Latins have the best family and culture rather than movies about guns and bad guys.

ACTRESS GIOVANNA MEZZOGIORNO (Fermina):

Q: When did you first read the book?

I was 15 years old, many years before. The way I perceived Love in the Time of Cholera 15 years after was totally different. Of course, when I was 15, I didn’t - it’s a very complicated story. There were a lot of emotions and sentiments which are difficult for someone who is 15 - especially the character of Fermina, who has a choice which is not easy to understand when you are a teenager and you have a vision of love which is very romantic. But 15 years later, I understood more about this. I can understand now why a woman would be afraid of that kind of man, that kind of love, which is very romantic, which is very beautiful, but it can be very, very scary. It’s very unreal. I understand why a woman that wants to build her life wants another kind of man near her - I can understand that. I don’t know what I would’ve done, but I can understand it.

Q: Why is that scary?

It’s a question of what you want in life. She wants security, she wants to be protected. She wants to be with a man that makes her feel comfortable, also. She has social missions, which is something that a lot of women have. It’s very common, she’s a very modern character, Fermina. What’s strange is that she’s the heroine of a romantic novel, but she’s not the romantic part of it. That’s interesting. That’s very modern, I think. She makes choices because she knows what she wants, she doesn’t follow her dreams, and of course she pays for it. There is a part where she suffers for that. She feels alone and she feels that maybe she doesn’t have the love of her dream, but it’s fine because she has a good husband to build a life with, which is something that a lot of women want, and that’s all.

Q: Do you believe in that obsessive love?

Not really, no. To love like that, it’s easier. To love and be there everyday, it’s hard. To confirm your choice every day, to be there for the good things and the bad things, it’s harder. To love like that, from far away, it’s beautiful - you take just the beautiful part of it.

Q: Which was the most difficult part of the film for you?

All the aging stuff was very hard, because we’d been in Cartagena a month before to work with a movement coach to be younger and older. I’m the only one who did all the movie - Javier had a younger actor, you know, and Benjamin actually comes out from 30, so that was really hard. At the beginning, Mike Newell wanted to have a younger actress and an older actress, which is logical, but one day he called me and said “Why don’t you do all the movie?” It was really scary, but I thought he was giving me a huge possibility that does not come often, so I said ‘okay, I’ll try, I’ll work for that.’ That was the hard part because it’s not just a matter of make-up and wigs and all that, but it’s about people having to follow the movie and your character and not think about “oh my god, she looks like 30 but she’s playing a 17-year-old person.”

Q: How was Javier to work with?

Javier may be the only actor I’ve ever met in my life who gives literally everything to the movie. During the movie, everything he does, everything he says, everything he lives is for the movie. He never cuts from the movie. He’s been a lesson. I don’t need to say because we all know how amazing an actor Javier is, but it’s been very important for me to see him work. He’s very absorbed by the movie and nothing else matters, and that’s very strong to see. That’s hard.

Q: Aren’t you, too?

Me, no, I am also, of course, especially in a movie like that, totally absorbed by the movie, but I also need to feel that I’m still myself and at the end of the day, cut and not be Fermina anymore. This, for me, is surviving. Otherwise, I can’t. I can’t take that weight for four months. Seeing Javier work, he’s a very, very, very method actor and so he never got out from that. That’s painful, I think it’s really hard.

It’s also been an amazing moment because I really met amazing people. It’s the first time I’m working on an American movie. It was a very, very big challenge for me, very big responsibility. When I flew to Cartagena, I really didn’t know anybody. So it was like “I’m doing Love in the Time of Cholera with Mike Newell on the other side of the world. Okay.” I think that’s enough for anybody. They were there, and they’ve been honestly amazing for me. I mean, Javier, Benjamin, John, Catalina, everybody. It’s important to have a group, and they helped me. Honestly, what I can say about Javier and Benjamin is that I would not have been able to do that if they had not been there. Honestly, I really mean it.

Q: You were scared on the plane over to Colombia, then?

I was sad on the plane. I was excited, yeah, I was in tears, I was scared, yeah, I was freaking. “Where am I going? How can I do that? It’s impossible!” At the end of the movie, I didn’t really know how it was going to go. I mean, we did it. That’s the last sentence Javier and I said to each other in London. We made it. It seemed so impossible at the beginning, then we made it. You’ll see, I don’t know, but it was good to look back and say “Wow, I did that.”

Q: Do you want to keep working in Hollywood?

That’s a strange question. Yes, I mean… Hollywood, not Hollywood, I want to work wherever a good movie is. If it’s here, I’m happy, but that’s not me. That’s something else, that’s higher. I don’t think about that. I didn’t do Love in the Time of Cholera thinking “I want to make it in Hollywood.” That was completely not in my thoughts.

Q: Was there a difference between this experience and the French and Italian movies?

Yes, it’s another world in a way. It’s bigger. There are rules that you have. You have to behave. It’s a different way of working. You have to accept the way of working and of being and behaving and if you accept those rules, you said “okay, I’m going to do that in that way” - don’t ask me what they are. (laughs) That’s special. Harder than anything I’d ever done before. So, yes, the movie is bigger. Being in Colombia for three months, it’s a lot of time. It’s different from anything I’ve ever done before, but in the end, when you go on set and it’s “okay, roll sound, action!” There, it’s the same, anywhere in the world. That very moment is where you have to make the scene in a good way, and that is the same everywhere. That doesn’t change, Hollywood, France, even, whatever, China. This is about work and what you’ve really worked for and what you can achieve. At the end of the day, for me, the most important thing is to say “I’m happy with what I’ve done.”

Q: It’s said that you are one of the most beautiful actresses in the world. Do you see beauty as a tool in your work?

I am? I don’t feel… I think that it’s important that an audience falls in love with an actor. Of course, if you are attractive, they look at you and say “wow.” It’s important, but I feel I never use my beauty. Maybe I could’ve done that more - I never did sexy parts, never used my body, never showed my body in that way. So, I think it’s important for people to fall in love with you, but then I never - so far, I didn’t put everything on that, saying “I’m beautiful, I look beautiful on screen, so it’s fine for me.” I work on my acting, and I still have a lot to learn and a lot to prove, so that’s what I’m thinking about. I’m also 32, so in five years, that’s not going to be real anymore (laughs), but that’s fine.